I arrived at The Kentucky Center on the final day of their twenty-fifth anniversary season. The lobby was filled with teenaged boys and girls from across the Commonwealth who were participating in the Governor’s School for the Arts. Plastic sheeting covered the area north of the box office, muffling the sound of jackhammers. Making my way to the compact, utilitarian offices adjoining the Mary Anderson Room, I met Stephen Klein, the fourth person to hold the position of president of The Kentucky Center since its opening in 1983. Unlike his predecessors, Stephen brings to the position a breadth of firsthand experience as both performer and administrator.
SK: As an actor, I’ve worked on Broadway and I have
also worked with some of the great orchestras as a narrator – the
Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra and others.
I’ve worked with some great artists – Neville Marriner, Mstislav
Rostropovitch, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Bernstein. Working with some of those
orchestras and working with some of those people puts you into a grand,
exalted place in understanding the arts from their viewpoint. I can be passionate
about the arts, love it and appreciate it. But to actually talk with Eric
Leinsdorf about his Turandot and what he was trying to achieve…it’s
an entirely different vantage point.
SD: Eventually you left New York and moved closer to your
hometown.
SK: I was the orchestra manager and tour manager for the
Cleveland Orchestra and toured the world with them. I was there when they
made the transition from Maazel (1972-1982) to Dohnanyi (1984-2002). After
that I went on to have my own orchestra, the Denver Symphony, which is an
entirely different experience.
SD: How long were you in Denver?
SK:We were there for a couple of years before Mary and
I went to Washington, D.C., where I worked for ten years with Rostropovitch.
SD: How do you see your experiences playing out as the
president of The Kentucky Center?
SK: Well, I can work with musicians – which isn’t
always easy; and I can work with some of the star artists – again,
not neces-sarily easy. I also was fortunate to have worked alongside Roger
Stevens, the chair-man of the Kennedy Center who created the NEA, persuaded
people to build the Kennedy Center and produced numerous plays, including
West Side Story and Annie, to name a few. He was under forty when he bought
the Empire State Building, so he wasn’t a bad businessman either.
SD: You went back to theatre for a while after Washington.
Tell me about that.
SK: I had an opportunity to produce some shows at Pittsburgh
Public Theater, some of which went on to Broadway. I produced two original
plays by August Wilson: Jitney and King Hedley II. I also produced an Andrew
Lloyd Webber show called By Jeeves based on the writings of P. G. Wodehouse.
That show didn’t do well, but it gave me a chance to work with Andrew
again – whom I knew from 1971 when I did Jesus Christ Superstar.
SD: You have worked in theatre as an actor and producer;
you’ve been a singer and worked with major symphony orchestras from
a management position and as a narrator. You have also had experience booking
shows, which requires another broad skill set including public relations,
marketing and working with unions and venue managers.
SK: Yes, we also built a theatre when The Pittsburgh Public
Theatre moved from the Hazlett on the north side to the O’Reilly downtown – so
that comes in handy. I had an opportunity to work with Michael Graves, the
architect responsible for the Humana Building across the street from the
Center.
SD: I didn’t realize he designed theatres.
SK: The O’Reilly was his first, and I don’t
think he has done any others since.
SD: I guess you have to be politically adept as you negotiate
and get all of the different people necessary to play nicely.
SK: Yes, the turn in Washington also gave me some insights
into politics. That has served me well here at The Kentucky Center, a quasi-governmental
agency.
SD: Quasi-governmental?
SK: The building is owned by the state of Kentucky, but
we are not government em-ployees. Our board of directors is separate from
the state, though we do have an oversight board appointed by the governor.
SD: The Kentucky Center certainly has some idiosyncrasies
of its own – one of which I noticed is being addressed by the installation
of an additional women’s rest room on the first floor.
SK: Yes, that is going in the old coat room space. We could
have been “grandfathered” in and bypassed the new code requiring
two-to-one rest rooms in new buildings, but there is a reason for this particular
code. It will improve our patrons’ experience at the Center, perhaps
dramatically in some cases.
SD: You have been here four years now. Do you feel you
have a handle on the soft spots?
SK:I know of the soft spots. I don’t know exactly
where all of them are. I am fortunate
to have a staff who are very adept at finding
problems and solving them quickly, so they
don’t interfere with our mission. We are also
fortunate to have support from the state for
the renovation work we’re doing. It had been
planned for years and years because some
of the physical plant is twenty-five years old.
SD: That’s a long time in terms of a venue.
SK: Especially when you are talking about the lighting
systems, the hydraulics system, the stage floor – things like that.
Just think about the state of telephones twenty-five years ago. Cell phones
were in their infancy and they were huge, bulky affairs if you could even
find one. Well, we had stage and house lights from 1983. There again, think
of the changes we have experienced. We were state of the art twenty-five
years ago and now we need to make a leap to reclaim that status.
SD: We are talking on the last day of The Kentucky Center’s
twenty-fifth anniversary season…
SK: Don’t ask me what the next twenty-five years
are going to look like!
SD: No, I won’t ask you to prognosticate; but I would
like to talk about things you have done recently to make the venue work
more efficiently toward your mission goals.
SK: It definitely does; everybody will be looking for Donald O’Connor
and Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, but I’m quite sure we’ll
come up with some people who can follow in their shoes.
SD: You always seem to have plenty of people to choose from.
SK: Physically, I felt the space should be friendlier,
warmer, a little more up-to-date. Hence the video screens that advertise
what we’re doing. But it isn’t just for promotion – the
screens are a consistent source of energy and life. We have also added the
sign on Main Street and we are now putting up banners with some of the
groups to help them be identified with the space when they are utilizing
the venue.
SD: What was your inspiration for these changes?
SK: When I was a kid, going to see the Cleveland Orchestra
at Severance Hall was like going to church and recognizing that you are
a heathen. Art seemed to me then a highly religious experience only for
very rich people. It was a pursuit for the elite and, of course, some of
the arts groups at that time were very comfortable with that image. For
some time, however, we have been trying to find ways to break down those
barriers. I think one of the things we can do is to make this place less
stuffy. So many arts centers are alabaster cities that seem off limits to
a majority of the population.
SD: That makes me think of Powell Hall in St. Louis – the
red carpets, crystal chandeliers and white Romanesque woodwork were so intimidating
for me growing up. It was like going to the Vatican.
SK: That’s the feeling. So how do we break down
those barriers? Cleveland had then, and still has, the children’s
concerts, which helped. For us to have Stage One and some of the Louisville
Orchestra’s YUM! orKIDStra concerts here is absolutely fantastic.
SD: The Kentucky Center itself has some programming for
young audiences as well.
SK: Yes, we’ve scandalized some folks by presenting
Dora the Explorer here. But we saw three performances of 2,000-plus people
each. That number included a lot of little ones – two- to four-year-olds – for
whom this was a wonderful experience. That’s going to keep the barrier
from ever being established. As they come back over and over again, The
Kentucky Center will simply be a familiar part of their childhood.
SD: Some of your predecessors have had ideas about using
The Kentucky Center beyond its role as a performance venue. What sorts of
events are you hosting?
SK: We no longer have a permanent restaurant here, which
is to the good. We now call that space the East Room, which is in addition
to the Mary Anderson Room, Clark-Todd Hall and Barnes Hall. We are trying
to figure out ways to bring in more businesses to use them for meetings.
We also hope to see an uptick in the number of rehearsal dinners, wedding
receptions, graduation parties and events of that kind. We are getting a
lot of play in the East Room as a space for business meetings. We have outfitted
these spaces with electric retractable screens and installed projectors
in the ceiling so people can just plug in their laptops and go.
SD: You are also operating the Brown Theatre on Broadway.
SK: It’s owned by the Fund for the Arts, but we manage
the space. Taken in context with the Whitney at 2,500 seats; the Bomhard
with 650 seats; the MeX upstairs is flexible, but call it 100 seats – the
Brown fills a very important niche at 1,400 seats. We can basically cover
the waterfront in terms of the attractions we bring in or rent to – from
cutting edge experimental theatre companies to the star headliners. All
of them are really good facilities.
SD: You have had some amazing jobs – from working
with operas and orchestras and musicals to now managing The Kentucky Center.
SK: It’s a wonderful gig. I’m surrounded by
all of these art forms I love. I continually run into people I know and
have known in other lives.
SD: What are some of the things you are looking forward
to in the Center’s twenty-sixth season?
SK: So much. I always look forward to the Opera and I think
La Traviata will be spectacular. This year we become the official home
of the IdeaFestival. Anthony Bourdain, who I think is absolutely terrific,
is coming this season. Mark O’Connor will be back, the Bellydance
Super Stars, the Soweto Gospel Choir. Pilobolus is coming back. I will try
to persuade my daughter to bring the grandkids to see Sesame Street.
SD: There is always a risk involved with presenting. How
is The Kentucky Center from a fiduciary standpoint?
SK: We are in pretty good shape. We have had a very good
year – we broke even for the third straight year. We want to conserve
our strength during the next season, so we are being somewhat cautious in
terms of what we choose to present.
SD: How many shows does The Kentucky Center itself present?
SD: Probably in the neighborhood of 40 shows a year, though
the Center is the site of something like 700 performances each year. We
will still present a lot of shows in 2009-10, but there will be more in
the Brown and Bomhard than in the Whitney. Having said that, Louisville
is an incredible town. We have an amazing arts community and people who
really support it – no other American city this size can boast the
diversity of arts we have available here. There is frankly no other group
of people with whom I would rather face this uncertain future than those
who are reading this article. This is a wonderful facility, doing great
things for an appreciative audience. What could be better?
For more about what is coming to The Kentucky Center and the Brown Theatre
this season and to order tickets, go to
kentuckycenter.org or
call 502.584.7777.